Home > News > Digital quantum battery proposed by the University of Illinois

December 28th, 2009

Digital quantum battery proposed by the University of Illinois

Abstract:
Alfred Hubler, a physicist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus, has described a new digital quantum battery that could offer both a huge increase of the energy output and in storage capacity. The gains are still theoretical at this moment, but the new concept consists in billions of nanoscale capacitors and is based on quantum effects happening at the atomic scale and able to boost energy storage. The new technology is expected to hold between two and ten times more energy than the best lithium-ion batteries currently available. As for conventional capacitors, the voltage applied to conducting plates separated by an insulating layer can cause waste of the stored energy by generating arcing. Extremely short spacing in quantum batteries, which is about 10 nanometers, is supposed to suppress this phenomenon.